Everybody knows that publishers now expect you to have a "platform," a built-in audience so that you can sell your book all by your own damn self, instead of relying on their increasingly useless in-house promotion. Sometimes, however, there is no platform, except in the literal sense. "This my book, this my book, and this my book," said a gentleman on the downtown 1 train the other day. (He goes by "Blue" but is also named Brad Bathgate.) "The first is a novel called Pretty Ugly. The second is called Corner Stores in the Middle of the Block. The third is a book of poetry, titled Don't Beat Your Children Or They'll End Up Like Me." Laugh it up. "Blue" has published exactly three more books than most of us, probably, and surely outsold this one!